Current Residents

Morgan Rose Free

Morgan Rose Free is a Canadian artist predominantly working in sculptural assemblage and installation. She has exhibited across North America including Calgary, Toronto, Montreal, Baltimore and Chicago. She held the position of Adjunct Professor of Sculpture and Freshman Foundations at Alfred University for the 2017 academic year, and recently relocated to Montreal QC. She received her MFA in Sculpture/Dimensional Studies at Alfred University in 2017 and her BFA in Fibre from the Alberta College of Art and Design with honors in 2012. From 2012-2015 Free held the position of Visual Artist in Residence with the Calgary Board of Education, working within public schools throughout the city on various creative projects including semi-permanent outdoor installations, coordinating student exhibitions in public spaces, and panel discussions with other local professionals.

"My practice is a recreating and a rearranging. As dreams serve to process and organize information gathered when awake, my mixed media works are a reimagining of my consciousness and surroundings. Memories, moments and emotions are translated into the physical. Everything stems from a personal narrative; a kind of self portrait. My work oscillates between assemblage of preexisting everyday objects and a thoroughly handmade aesthetic. Objects amass into new compositions, reformatting their separate contexts into alternative narrative structures while my unshakable affinity for the tactility of fiber allows textiles and embroidery to enter my work more often than not."

PADYN HUMBLE

Born and raised in Great Falls, Montana, Padyn Humble is a sculptor whose work deals with queer motifs. In his work, he utilizes Western iconography and his content is in direct dialogue with Montana’s hypermasculine social and cultural standards. Inspiration for his work stems from childhood influences like cartoons, Barbie, and truckstop souvenirs. Humble has been an active artist since 2014. Since then, he has held over eight solo shows, created a collective to effect change in his town’s art scene, and curated five large art exhibitions. He received his BFA in painting from the University of Montana in 2018.

"I am interested in intersections of masculinity, sexuality, and privilege, and how meeting social expectations awards personal advantage. For instance, the Wild West’s masculine ideals are influenced by deeply ingrained cowboy ruggedness and resilience. I research predispositions of this norm and how these standards are perpetuated through cultural models. I look toreproductions of the Western attitude to dissect their legitimacy through exaggeration, contradiction, and/or recontextualization into queer identity. The work both perpetuates and challenges a constructed gender binary that uses masculine and feminine codes.

Recontextualizing objects and images requires an understanding of the original intention or history while simultaneously questioning their currency. This is done by compositional fragmentation, suggesting masculine values are fragmented, and elevating the presence of femininity. Combating gender expectations happens when “feminine” attributes such as the color pink, glossy textures, sequins etc. are contrasted with “masculine” identifiers like boots, body hair, and work equipment. By utilizing familiar aspects of Western culture, I seek out or create queer dialogue in an otherwise homogeneous discourse. This combination of visual elements allows my sculptural work to create a gender inclusive social landscape."